E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-68222-837-1
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
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ONE 2008 In the south west of England lies the county of Wiltshire. Home to both Stonehenge and Avebury, two world heritage sites from the Stone Age, the county is crisscrossed by paths dating back to the same period. Its undulating terrain with far reaching views, considerably gentler than the wilder rolling hills of its cousin Devon, is noticeably set apart by its well maintained topography. An impeccably neat county, some would say refined, Wiltshire is a beautiful place. Sadly though, it has changed a great deal in the last thirty years or so. It is no longer as rural as it was, most of the farms now are single crop affairs and despite the many thatched cottages there are few rural tradesmen. Though the villages retain some of their rustic charm the towns now seem like satellites of London. Despite that there are patches where a man can live a quiet life, where, so long as he is friendly, his neighbours will respect his privacy. But none of that means a man can stay hidden. There is always a chance of bumping into someone from the past; there is always a chance that, someone looking hard enough, will find who they are looking for. Obviously the longer a man remains undetected the more careless he is likely to become which makes it easier for anyone who may be waiting. Dave Parkes had been living quietly in the county for five years now. He had moved about quite a lot in the preceding six years, including two years fighting abroad. He had used a couple of false identities and so had been hopeful that his move to the countryside would work. Not that he had immediately realised the danger his last real job had put him in. When he had been recruited back in 1997 he had been assured that the hit was sanctioned, that there would be no comeback. Other members of the team had realised immediately that they had been duped and had talked of heading for the hills as fast as they possibly could, they had even talked about handing their employers over but, as usual, they hadn’t actually known who their employers had been. Everything had been done, as always, through front men so they didn’t have the kind of information which could buy them redemption. So they had run as fast and as far as their pay could get them, signed up for wars here and there, and hoped that everything would work out. For a while it seemed they had been successful in that and Dave had started to ease his guard. If he kept his head down he should be fine, surely nobody would expect him to risk coming back to England anyway. Accordingly Dave had slowly grown more confident, more relaxed. His neighbours had no reason to doubt that he was exactly what he told them, a man living on his army pension in his little cottage, the last in the street of his small village. Considered the army county, encompassing Salisbury Plain, utilised by the British Army for over a hundred years, and various garrison towns such as Tidworth, there was an abundance of former squaddies living in the area, so there were plenty of people like Dave. He took to going for long walks along the ancient paths, enjoying it just as much as he had when he was a teenager. He spent time in the many teashops and small pubs and when at home he read more and more about the county he now called his own. He learned about the old religions and the traditions and so on. He actually found a kind of peace which, all things considered, was far more than he deserved. Not everyone was fooled though. The bloodstained papers he had left on a badly mutilated corpse had struck certain people as too convenient. They were not squeamish, his pursuers, they had simply cut off the hands and sent them back for confirmation. It had not been long coming. They were the wrong blood group, the wrong fingerprints, the wrong hands. A simple error but then Dave hadn’t really expected anyone to go to that amount of trouble and he hadn’t had the time or opportunity to check such details. Part of him still believed the assurances he had been given and in any case, who the hell would have anticipated a team being sent all the way to the Caucasus just to check on a rumour about him. Dave had been a good soldier of course but he had never really understood just how dangerous the mercenary world is. He had worried about the enemy in front of him and, even after such a high profile job as the one he had been involved in, he had not realised that a mercs employers were often more dangerous than anyone. Certainly if they had as much to lose as his employers had. They were not likely to accept being assassinated because he could one day be found. Nor did he fully realise just how displeased that others would be, others who were far more powerful than his employer had been. So slowly but surely Dave was closed down while all the time thinking he had outsmarted everyone. For the last ten days four men had been dug in less than two hundred yards from his cottage watching not just Dave but also his neighbours. Perfectly concealed they were able, under cover of darkness only, to make the necessary shift changes, leaving their positions for long enough only to answer the calls of nature and to send brief, encrypted messages back to the team leader. Others had been able to observe Dave whenever he left the village though, obviously, they had not been able to follow him everywhere for fear of being spotted. They were confident however that Dave would not be difficult when the time came. They didn’t always go to such cautious lengths but Dave was the last target and they wanted everything to go smoothly as soon as the go ahead was given. After ten days the job had been planned to the finest detail, the hit, the removal and disposal of the body and the dispersal of the team. The four entry men of the now reinforced team had all the information they needed and it was now just a matter of waiting. Dave was to be executed at 0220 hours. The two entry men at the front of the building, JD and his mate Lee, were lying in the cover of some bushes eighty yards away, watching the cottage and watching the village close down for the night. There was a happy quiet in the air. Lee stirred slightly “I’m bloody starving” he said quietly. “You greedy git, you had the biggest kebab I’ve ever seen only a couple of hours ago.” JD grinned. The two had been friends for years and worked well together. “Mind you, I could murder a brew and a smoke.” “One flask of posh coffee coming up, none of that instant crap you keep drinking” Lee chuckled “Since starting this job I’ve developed a taste for the refined things in life.” “Bollocks” came the response as JD, head tucked into his chest, used his battered old trench lighter to get his cigarette going. There was no flame from such a lighter, nothing to betray the presence of the user. Sometimes the older technologies are the best. The glowing tip of the cigarette would never leave the small hole dug especially for the purpose of hiding such things, and the thin piece of cardboard ensured there was no reflection on the smoker’s face. JD smiled his thanks when Lee passed him the coffee. Only an hour to go now and the two men would move in and relieve Dave of the burden of life. There were another two men at the rear of the cottage who were also ready to enter, but each man always assumed he would get the first shot in. There was nothing personal about it, although JD knew the man slightly from years before. They had gotten on okay and Dave had a good reputation in the mercenary industry though there were rumours that he had been drinking too much on his last couple of jobs. JD was hoping that was true, certainly from what his team had observed Dave showed all the signs of a man who enjoyed a drink. Dave Parkes was the last of the men JD had to account for though and he would be happy to finally finish with this contract and retire. It had taken ten years to get to this point, mainly because they had been involved in other operations and of course it had taken a long time to track the sod down but it was telling that even after all these years, their employer was still determined to let none of the team Dave had been a part of, get away with that one fateful job. The long wait, and the other missions, had made up JD’s mind. The mercenary industry had changed since he had first entered it and he felt it was time to disappear and try to live out the rest of his life with no need for violence of any kind. Unless anybody decided to take him out for any reason but there was no point in worrying about that. There was no reason why he shouldn’t be left alone to retire and the money he had stashed away over the years would give him a good start and this job should go quite smoothly. The best laid plans of mice and men, as it were, often get fucked up in the most ridiculous of fashions. At one thirty am a tomcat and two females, who had behaved impeccably for months, decided to have a set to in Dave’s back garden. As usual when cats fight they made a terrible bloody noise and, just for good measure, knocked a small metal bucket off a low wall onto the patio. Dave Parkes who, following his usual practise, had fallen asleep on his sofa, woke up terrified. For some time he had been having nightmares about someone coming for him and the noise in the back garden had come right in the middle of just such a nightmare. He was instantly awake, and scared shitless to boot. He shoved his feet into his trainers, opened the front door and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, through the village, which was a dumb thing to do really, and straight down the track into the woods where the road curved as it exited the...
